Overlay / identity

A common claim among white North Americans is an “Indian princess” ancestor. While there were no European-style princesses (though there are countless prominent tribal women), in the colonial period, Native Americans often intermarried with traders and agents, many of whom were Irish. The children of these unions usually inherited the best of both worlds. The massive and violent white expansion that began in the early 19th century drastically changed these relationships.

Interlocking histories; memory, time, and place coincide; connections persist.

In 1743, Mary Jemison was born aboard a ship heading from Ireland to the colonies. During the French and Indian War, when she was fifteen, Mary was captured by a Shawnee raiding party and sold to the Seneca, who adopted and renamed her Dehgewanus, "Two Falling Voices." She married twice and had seven children. Although there were attempts at “rescue” by whites, Dehgewanus refused to leave her people and became an effective negotiator on their behalf. The “Old White Woman of the Genesee” died in 1833 and is immortalized with a statue in New York’s Letchworth State Park.

In the 1970s, a group of Palestinians found refuge in New Mexico. Many have intermarried with Navajos (Diné) and some Diné have even converted to Islam. Despite inevitable tensions, according to various reports, thanks to the Palestinian traders, business for artisans is booming. For the Diné, the Earth is Mother. For the Palestinians, the New Mexico landscape is a fond reminder of home.

In 2012, a group of Diné women in solidarity with Palestine opposed Navajo President Ben Shelly’s visit to Israel to explore the use of chemical fertilizers. The pacifist group is in favor of sustainable agriculture and draws numerous parallels between Palestinian struggles and their own historical traumas. They take as their axiom:

“Every policy the Palestinians are now enduring was practiced on the American Indian….American Indians are the Palestinians of the United States, and the Palestinians are the American Indians of the Middle East,” -- Russell Means, 2009

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Palestinians, Native Americans, and the Irish are renowned for their skills in music, dance, storytelling, and poetry, for their contemporary and traditional arts and crafts, for their cuisine and hospitality, their wit, their wisdom, and for their profound spiritual awareness and love of beauty. Despite invasion, occupation, colonization, displacement, and all the resulting trials and tragedies, for the most part, Palestinians, Native Americans, and the Irish have never lost their cultural identities.